Languages have been a staple of fantasy since the Lord of the Rings was published and Appendices E and F revealed the beautiful languages that Tolkien created. Given the influence Tolkien had on the entire fantasy genre, it is no wonder that languages are a character creation option in Dungeons and Dragons. For the most part, this ends up being mostly used as flavor because Common is spoken by almost everyone the PC’s would want to talk to.

This leads to the player’s choices during character creation not really mattering unless the DM decides it is important to the game and there are some nasty implications when it comes to Common. In 5e, the typical speakers of Common are listed as Human, but it seems like every race also speaks Common. If you’re building a world where humans are the majority, then that would fit the lore. In the real world, English is the most common with 1.456 Billion speakers, and Latin was the lingua franca of Europe until the 1700’s.

However, I don’t like the implication that Humans are the most powerful or influential race in a setting. Firstly, while data from DNDBeyond suggests that Human Fighters are the most popular choice for player characters, I have some concerns about that data. DNDBeyond is a service where most of the more interesting options are locked behind a paywall and we see the non-SRD races and classes are underrepresented, likely due to the paywall. And, despite being the most common choice, it is only about a fifth of the sample, which means that about 80% of characters are NOT humans.

Secondly, there are over 50 playable races in DND (and more if you allow custom lineages and homebrew) with their own lore, culture, and civilizations! Why would all of them, and many NPC races, all speak the Human’s language? Unless your world is human-dominant, you need a major justification to make this work.

In my campaign setting of Amoria, humans are not the most populous race. Outside of the United Principalities of Atford, where cities are more cosmopolitan and integrated, you would be hard pressed to find a large number of humans. A Loxodon on the other side of the continent is as likely to see a human as they are an Aboleth!

But, I understand why Common is the lingua franca of DND. Under the rules for language learning in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, it takes 10 in-game weeks of dedicated study to gain proficiency in a language. If the PC’s had to do that every time they arrived in a new part of the world, the pacing of the game would drag to a halt. And you can only do so many social encounters that are reminiscent of Darmok before it gets boring.

But instead of accepting this, I want to create an in-universe reason for why most people speak Common and create an incentive for players choosing to use their downtime to learn a language. Enter, a Lore-drop and new mechanics for languages in Dungeons and Dragons.

Lore

You have been studying history for years at Sardukat University. As the world’s longest-running university, there are books in the libraries older than the Elves and rumor has that there is even an eyewitness account of the Shattering somewhere among the shelves. This intrigues you far less than the fact that you can read books from five-thousand years ago with no difficulty. While much has changed, the written and spoken words have not.

In your curiosity, you are directed not to another scholar, but to a temple dedicated to Eibia-Vex. You haven’t heard of this god before, and the temple is on the Far Eastern shores of Amoria, but you begin your trek anyways. Getting to the Far East is easy, the roads lead straight to the Uldran Pass, but from there your journey is harder. You spend months trying to navigate and avoid the dangers of the vast stretches of wilderness, but the challenge continues to grow. After a time, you start to think this was a fool’s quest, but you press on regardless.

In the end, your determination is enough, and you find the temple. The Clerics of Eibia-Vex nurse you back to health and you are granted an audience with the High Priestess. She looks upon you and smiles. “Welcome, my child. Hear the Mysteries of Eibia-Vex.”

You spend years learning all you can of the Mystery Cycle and commit it all to paper. While learning, you fall in love and start a family here. You complete your magnum opus, but by then you are far too old to traverse home to Sardukat and deliver it. Your daughter, now an adult, is willing to bring it home and, with your blessing, sets out to Sardukat.

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In the First World, languages were as varied as individuals. From one settlement to the next, the dialects were so different that misunderstandings compounded, and division was inevitable. A Half-Dragon linguist named Eibia-Vex was obsessed with bridging understanding. Through their quest to find the power to do so, they realized that ascension to Godhood was the only way to gain the power necessary. Eibia-Vex made many bargains and eventually gained the power needed to do so. But, even Godhood is not enough to bring all under a common tongue.

Still, Eibia-Vex was not deterred. They saw the Sundering on the horizon and took this as an opportunity. In the heavenly plane of Babel, the god threaded tongues and crafted divine servants to oversee the union. Rather than craft a single common tongue, Eibia-Vex crafted families of tongues, similar enough to be understood despite their differences. When the first world was Sundered, the divine servants worked quick and the tongues were united.

It is from here that we gain Common. Originally a trade language of the Giants and Dragons, it has become a memetic virus. Invested with the full might of Eibia-Vex, Common is blessed and it is picked up quickly by any who hears it.

New Mechanics for Better Languages

Better DND Languages v1.0 © 2024 by Cody A. Roberts is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

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Languages provide a way for DMs to add more depth to their games and can increase a player’s immersion in the world. We should always try to make our players choices matter and, by ignoring languages or only using them to increase the stakes, we can miss out on feats of player creativity.

An easy way to make languages matter is to have NPC’s make off-handed comments in something other than Common. Perhaps the dragon your bard is trying to seduce makes a joke in Draconic to its servant Kobolds. You could also leave the answer to a puzzle written somewhere in a room in one of the languages your players chose to reward them for exploration and their choices.

The following rules allow for the players’ decisions during character creation to have an impact on the game and I think add more realism than the rules for learning languages in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything do.

Language Levels

During their adventures, players will spend time away from their homeland and with people who speak different languages than their own. While Common is known by a vast number of people, there are many who prefer to speak their native tongue. For example, the players come across an Orc encampment and sneak their way in to try and learn what the Orcs are up to. Because the Orcs are planning to invade an Elvish village, they know it is possible that someone may listen in and give strict orders to speak only in Orc to maintain operational security. If none of the players speak Orc, then they will need to find a different way to learn the Orcs plan.

Characters start with the languages indicated by the race and background they choose, or through mutual agreement with the DM. These languages are all known at the Fluent level, unless the DM and the player agree that certain languages should be at a level below Fluent. Note the language level on the character sheet alongside the language.

Languages can be known at the Beginner, Limited, Professional, and Fluent levels. If a player attempts to communicate in a language they know below the Fluent level, then they incur a penalty to social checks, as noted in the table below. Additionally, the table shows the rough equivalent to the CEFR Language Levels.

Learning New Languages

Characters can learn a new language during their short and long rests, or during long periods of downtime. While downtime will result in faster acquisition, using rests and even travel time will allow players to not have to wait in-between adventures to improve their skills.

The time it takes to learn a language is represented by language points, with the amount needed scaling from level to level. Different activities are assigned a value in Table 2 based on how active they require a player to be to learn a language. Once completed, the player earns that many language points, plus their Intelligence modifier and minus how different the language is from one of the languages they are already fluent in.

The image to the left is the relational diagram for languages in the Amoria Setting, but the DM is free to modify as they see fit for the lore of their world. Each line represents a degree of separation. If a language is not connected by a line to a language the character already knows, then the language has 5 degrees of separation.

In the lore for Amoria, Common is a memetic virus, so it confers +5 bonus to any language learning activity. DMs can also provide other bonuses through magic items or situational fiats.

Click through the following tabs for some examples:

This is a simple system but can provide more depth and agency for your players. That being said, it currently has not been play-tested. Feedback is more than welcome! Please leave a comment below if you tried it out, or if you see any holes I missed.

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